35AUTUMN 2009

school innovation

A new credit system is taking the stress out of pupil reward schemes. David Rogers reports. A

year ago, I carried out a survey of the rewards system at Priory School Specialist sports college. After

collecting the opinions of staff and pupils, it was clear that the young people didn’t value the school’s system of praise stamps and certificates. That system did not effectively reward progress, attendance or effort. We were also concerned about the ‘forgotten majority’ - the learners who were getting things right most of the time. This group of students felt ignored - and felt that their badly behaved colleagues received more recognition. Finally, it was clear that our pupils would value a system that was linked to something tangible - like free chocolate, trips and sports equipment.

With this information, I set about designing a system that would:

a) recognise every pupilb) be available to all staff and learnersc) be easy to use - the survey showed that the old system was too complicated d) encourage pupils to save and be responsiblee) turn points into prizes

My prototype was a paper-based system that was linked to SIMs. It was well received by staff. However, the implementation proved problematic. Each of the reward slips would have taken 2-3 minutes to enter into the system. There were over 1,200 pupils at the school - we did not have the administrative capacity.

Vivo MilesThis was when I discovered Vivo Miles. The system offered everything that we wanted in a rewards system - and required minimum internal support. We’ve been using the system since April 2009 to reward our pupils. Feedback is extremely positive. The staff use a simple online form to reward their pupils.

Every member of the school community has an account. Teaching and support staff give either ‘academic’ or ‘citizenship’ vivos (or points) in class, or around the school. Students like the system because it is transparent – they

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36 AUTUMN 2009

school innovation

“The staff say it encourages positive behaviour and

requires no paperwork”

David Rogers is the geography curriculum leader at Priory school specialist sports college, Portsmouth. He’s also an avid twitterer – check him out at twitter.com/daviderogers.

can check their online account and see who has awarded them and why. This encourages them to repeat their positive behaviour. In addition, stats from our information management software can be imported into Vivo Miles.

Our students are rewarded for each week they achieve 100% attendance and punctuality, for getting top effort grades and for meeting their progress targets. This ensures that every pupil can earn a reward.

Some critics of ‘points mean prizes’ systems

argue that young people should not be rewarded for doing what they are expected to do. But that’s where Vivo Miles is effective. The price of prizes means that pupils need to save over a long time. This encourages learners to get it right more often and to save their points. There is no point in behaving for a short period of time as you won’t be able to get rewarded.

Vivo Miles are almost infinitely adaptable. So far at Priory, we have run equipment and uniform focus weeks and used the system to run prize draws. Next year, we will award interest to those who don’t spend their points

and introduce a ‘tax’ - where an amount of money will be given to charity. The system mirrors online banking, and I hope it will teach the children valuable money management skills.

Like any initiative, there are drawbacks. There will always be staff who don’t reward pupils in class. Vivo gets around this because the bulk of points are rewarded for effort, progress and attendance. These points are centrally generated for every pupil. The other

problem? Pupils complain that they want cheaper prices!

The staff say it encourages positive behaviour and requires no paperwork. They’ve also told me the system has real currency with the pupils – they really value the points.

From a management perspective, the system is easy to administer. Vivo Miles generates a wealth of usage statistics – so it is relatively easy to measure the impact and use of the system, especially when used with other school data. In addition, the budget management is very straightforward - as the teachers are set a weekly budget.

There are a number of improvements we would like to see. The introduction of ‘coded’ tokens would allow pupils to be rewarded quicker. It would also be nice if the system was more integrated with our VLE - for example, if it used the same user names and passwords. We’re assured these updates will be available from September.

The rewards of saving

The Vivo shop